Category: Heirloom plants

Carbon Garden / Flowering Shrubs / Food Forest / Garden Design / Heirloom plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Permaculture / Plant Literacy / Tree Identification / Trees / Wildlife Gardening

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Deciduous Trees and Shrubs Every Master Gardener Should Know

Deciduous Shade Trees Quercus spp., Oak Acer spp., Maple Betula spp., Birch Corylus americana, American Hazelnut Fagus grandifolia, American Beach Juglans nigra, Black Walnut Platanus occidentalis, American Sycamore Liquidambar styraciflua, American Sweetgum Carya illinoinensis, Pecan Carya spp., Hickory Salix spp., Willows   Flowering Deciduous Trees   Aesculus pavia, Scarlet Buckeye Amelanchier laevis, Allegheny Serviceberry Cercis canadensis, Redbud Cornus spp. Other Dogwood species Cornus florida, Flowering Dogwood Lagerstroemia indica, Crape Myrtle Liriodendron tulipifera, Tulip Poplar Magnolia virginiana, Sweetbay Magnolia Magnolia spp....

Bulb Gardening / Conservation / Container Gardens / Evergreen Perennials / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Geophytes / Heirloom plants / Hummingbird Gardening / Native Plants / Permaculture / Plant Literacy / Sustainable Gardening / Wildlife Gardening

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Ornamental Perennials Every Master Gardener Should Know

Perennial plants feature prominently in most gardens.  They may be evergreen or deciduous, have showy flowers or may be grown mostly for their foliage.  Some steal the spotlight for only a few weeks while others remain productive over several months.  Flowering perennials, whether native or not, help support a variety of pollinating insects.  Those that produce seeds may support birds long into the winter. Plants readily available in the nursery trade are most likely hybrids or named cultivars of specific...

Carbon Garden / Climate Change / Conservation / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants

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For the Love of Ferns: Solutions for Our Garden’s Challenges

  The Fern Solution Once upon a time, I considered ferns the magical solution to most of my gardening challenges.  Deep dry shade?  Plant some Polystichum, Christmas ferns.  Soggy shade?  Plant some cinnamon or ostrich ferns.  A wet meadow in partial sun?  Marsh ferns, Thelypteris, will thrive.  Winter color in part sun?  Plant some Dryopteris ‘Autumn Brilliance’ ferns.  Deer?  Bunnies? No worries, grazers normally ignore the ferns, and especially avoid the Cyrtomium holly fern species.  Slopes with too much erosion? ...

Prized Plants at the Olympic Games

Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Evergreen trees / Fragrant Plants / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Ornamental Shrubs / Therapeutic Gardening / Trees

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Prized Plants at the Olympic Games

  The Olympic Games, a symbol of international unity and athletic excellence, incorporate plants and flowers into their ceremonies. These botanical elements enhance the visual appeal of the events and carry cultural and historical significance as well. Laurel and Olive in Ancient Greece In ancient Greece, victors of the Olympic Games were awarded olive wreaths, known as kotinos, made from the branches of the olive tree which is sacred to Zeus. This tradition dates back to 776 BCE and symbolizes...

Carbon Garden / Climate Change / Conservation / Food Forest / Foraging / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Mycorrhiza / Native Trees / Permaculture / Restoration / Sustainable Gardening / Tree Care / Tree Identification / Trees / Trees in Winter / Wildlife Gardening / Williamsburg Botanical Garden

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Beech, the Mother Tree, Queen of the Forest

A Mythic Forest The American beech, Fagus grandifolia, once covered most of North America from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts.  Before colonists cleared our ancient forests for farmland, large beech groves grew as part of the climax forest community.  A single beech tree can live for centuries, and as it ages it surrounds itself with sapling trees growing as suckers from its relatively shallow root system, forming an expanding grove of graceful beech trees....

Carbon Garden / Conservation / Food Forest / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Keystone Species / Miyawaki Forest Method / Native Plants / Native Trees / Permaculture / Resource Protection / Tiny Forest / Tree Care / Trees / Wildlife Gardening

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Cultivating a Tiny Forest (Part 1)

  Our once shady front yard was left a bright expanse of coarse wood chips and mangled leaves after the arborists pulled out their heavy equipment and left, that hot summer afternoon almost a dozen years ago.  A freak summer thunderstorm had harbored a waterspout or small tornado when it blew in from College Creek a few days before.  Our first clue that something was wrong had been seeing the underside of a muddy root ball rising 8 feet or...

Birds / Carbon Garden / Conservation / Edible Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Flowering Shrubs / Food Forest / Foraging / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Larval Host Plants / Native Trees / Permaculture / Wildlife Gardening

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Part 2: PNV: Potential Natural (Native) Vegetation

  Appropriate Species for Tiny Forests in Eastern Virginia Tiny forests designed following the Miyawaki method include a wide variety of native trees, shrubs, and ground covers planted randomly and densely, varying the heights of trees to establish a canopy layer, intermediate layers, and a ground cover layer.  Plant as many as 3 to 5 plants per square meter into the prepared soil.  Plants grow quickly, reaching for the light.  A forest that takes a century or more to develop...

Tricolor culinary sage

Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Food Forest / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Hummingbird Gardening / Propagation / Summer Color Plants / Wildlife Gardening / Williamsburg Botanical Garden

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Sage ‘The Savior’

  “Why should a man die in whose garden grows sage? Against the power of death there is not medicine in our gardens But Sage calms the nerves, takes away hand Tremors, and helps cure fever. Sage, castoreum, lavender, primrose, Nasturtium, and athanasia cure paralytic parts of the body. O sage the savior, of nature the conciliator!” From the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum ca 1100-1200 CE   The name Salvia officinalis, designating our common culinary sage, derives its species name from...

Carbon Garden / Edible Plants / Evergreen Perennials / Food Forest / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Holiday Plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Pollinators / Wildlife Gardening / Williamsburg Botanical Garden

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Mythical Rosemary

  Mythical Rosemary The woody, green fragrance of rosemary brings happiness.  Rosemary has served as food, fragrance, medicine, as a religious tool, and as a favorite garden plant for millennia. It is considered a sacred and magical herb, associated both with Aphrodite and with Mother Mary.  Rosemary has been planted in monastery, temple, medicinal and royal gardens over many centuries. Known now as Salvia rosmarinus, rather than the Rosmarinus officinalis we all learned, rosemary has one of the longest cultural...

Edible Plants / Evergreen Perennials / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Pollinators / Spring / Summer / Wildlife Gardening

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Magical Thyme

  “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,  Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:” William Shakespeare, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Magical Thyme If you are wanting to conjure a bit of magic in your...